Welcome to sandbox61.wikispaces.com

WIKISPACES - PART OF TES IS SAYING FAREWELL DUE TO A LACK OF FUNDING AND INVESTMENT FOR TECHNOLOGICAL UPDATES ETC AND THEREFORE THIS SITE AND ITS ASSOCIATED SITES WILL NO LONGER BE AVAILABLE FROM JULY 31ST 2018. AS OWNER OF THESES SITES I AM HOPING TO TRANSFER THEM TO ANOTHER PLATFORM BUT AS IT IS OVER 800 PAGES THIS MAY TAKE A WHILE. I AM DISAPPOINTED THAT AFTER 12 YEARS ONE OF THE WORLD RENOWNED EDUCATION NEWS ORGANISATIONS HAS DECIDED TO END THIS SERVICE AFTER IT BOUGHT IT IN 2014!

This is a brief introduction of how to manipulate wikispaces, to make it look and feel more professional, and using the tools and techniques used on the Technology departments' wikispaces:

A wiki is basically a website that can be edited whilst online. With an edit button on the site (like you can see on this wiki), multiple people can enter information into the wiki and it can easily be edited from any computer with internet access. You can also 'lock down' a wiki so that only members can edit and you can even choose to have a wiki that only members can view.

You may wish to set up a new wikispace and here is link a showing you how to do this:

http://www.wikispaces.com/site/tour#introduction

Just to show you a few statistics about how many people view the Technology wikispaces:

Features

We are going to look at the following features:

overview and using the edit toolbar
setting up new pages
adding images
adding links to pages
adding tags to pages
adding table of contents (toc) to pages
adding PowerPoint presentations to wikispace using
adding YouTube videos
adding Google Docs Presentations
adding Google Docs Forms
look and feel of your wikispace

Edit Toolbar

Each editable page on Wikispaces has an "edit" button at the top of the page. Click on the "edit" button to bring up the page editor. The page editor allows you to add text and pictures to a page and to format that page. The editor has a visual mode and a plain text mode.

Click on the "edit" button to use some of the features, add an image and some text, add a web address and create a link, and add a widget for example a PowerPoint presentation or YouTube video. Whilst you are in the edit mode Wikispaces automatically saves regularly, but it is a wise precaution to also additional push the save button, this then returns to the actual wikispace and you will have to click on edit again to continue editing.
NB There is no spellchecker within wikispaces so you may want to download the Google spellchecker.

Features | Edit Toolbar | New Pages | Links | Images | Tags | TOC | Playlists | Look & Feel | References

New Pages

Adding pages to you wiki is straight forward, just find the "new page" button at the top of the page, the most important thing to remember is that each page needs an individual name. Watch the video.

Images

Adding images to your wiki, which you have saved to your computer, or thumb-drive, can be uploaded to the wiki and stored online, and reused as many times as you wish.
It is important to note that image size does really matter ! The whole wiki page workable area is 800 pixels wide (for most computers), therefore if you download a picture straight from your camera it will be about 2500 pixels wide depending on your settings. (its a good idea to reset the settings on you camera to web/tv size, if you know most of the images are going to go onto the web) Pixels cost memory and slow down the upload time of each image so it is good practice to have pictures about the size you want them on the page. You can use any photo editing software to change the image size, the image resolution for the web should be set to 72 dpi.
Personally I work with multiples of 50s when deciding on the width of images, knowing that the page is 800 pixels wide if I want the image to take up half the page I make it 400 pixels wide, if I want it to be smaller I work with 200, and 150 pixels wide, etc.
So here's how to add an image:

Here are thumbnails of the images you can add to your page:


Image 1	Image 2	Image 3	Image 4	Image 5

Alternatively you can add images straight from the web, for example click on this image: select "copy image location" and add it to your page using the external image tab and paste it in. you can alter the sizes and position using the plus and minus buttons
external image wiki2.jpg

Or go to this site and "copy the image location" http://www.ignitesocialmedia.com/services/applying-social-media/wikis/

Playlists

When you search for videos I recommended that you save them as your 'favorites' so that you can find them again. or even better save them as 'playlists'. With playlists - a collection of YouTube videos which you give an individual name to. So if you find four or five videos you want your students to watch and you do not want to upload and embed them all individually, you can upload a YouTube player which plays the contents of your playlist.

Look & Feel

Adding visual content can make pages exciting and visually stimulating which will engage and encourage your students to join in with the learning experience.
Wordle

http://www.wordle.net/

Quizzes

http://www.xatquiz.com/

Animations

http://animoto.com/educat

Jigsaws

http://www.jigzone.com/

Comicstrips

http://pixton.com/

References

The following two sites have a wealth of materials for you to use upload download and look at its worth a wet sunday afternoon looking through each link and making evaluations. There are also tips and tricks available here.

http://learningweb2.wikispaces.com/

http://cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com/

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